Every year at about this time -- just days after our hallmark community event, TransaprencyCamp -- we kick up our heels, shake our heads, and think, “That was our best event yet.”
But this year, we really mean it.
TransparencyCamp 2013 was different from its predecessors. Not only was it our largest TCamp to-date -- with a chart-topping 500 participants from over 25 countries and 33 states* -- but it was also our strongest. More than a reunion of old friends fighting the same fight, this TransparencyCamp was a veritable democratic laboratory, with scientists from different backgrounds, countries and creeds coming together to share their experiments, find collaborators, and bring new ideas back home for testing and tweaking.
We’ll have some more reflections and behind the scenes views in the days ahead, but first, we wanted to share with you a closer at the weekend.
I met Sandra Moscoso at TransparencyCamp last year and was immediately impressed by her work opening up D.C. public school data to improve area schools. She is an obvious choice to be this month’s OpenGov Champion.
During the daytime, Sandra manages an open data portal at the World Bank for the bank’s financial sector, so she is familiar with the usefulness of open data. But it is her work in her local D.C. community that sets her apart. As a mom of two public school students, she is a member of the Capitol Hill Public School Parent Organization (CHPSPO), which looks to improve the local school system by organizing rallies and bake sales, restoring school buildings and talking to city officials. Sandra is often very hands-on in these activities, but her biggest personal mission with CHPSPO has been introducing the use of open government data as a basis in all they do.
As you can see in the video, she and other CHPSPO members were able to collect data to show how the schools that had a full time librarian had better test score results than those who had lost theirs due to budget cuts. The group was able to use that figure as an effective basis for their request to the city to restore funding for librarians. She also recently sent an open letter to Mayor Vincent Gray, asking for public school data she wanted use in an Open Data Day Hackathon in D.C. The city released the data, and even sent a data analyst to the hackathon, too. Who knows if Mayor Gray's administration would release this data had Sandra not publicly asked for it? Going to Sandra’s home to film the interview felt more like visiting family friends for brunch. Which, in fact, they were preparing as we arrived. Sandra and her husband have a cozy Victorian townhouse in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. We saw some very nice Lego projects and other things created by her smart and sweet kids and heard about how much they love their school.
“I have the best community here in Capitol Hill” Sandra says. She knows most of her neighbors, many of which also actively participate in neighborhood projects and politics. “I want them to stay.” Many D.C. families end up moving to the suburbs in Virginia and Maryland when their kids hit middle school age, as public middle schools in the District have a bad reputation and it’s a vulnerable age for children. She hopes to improve the situation by advocating for better schools, armed with all the open data she can get her hands on and a lot of enthusiasm. Her home was not the only place where we filmed. When I first approached Sandra about filming her for the OpenGov Champion series, she sent me a flurry of links to tons of activities she was doing around town. If you follow her on Twitter, there's barely a day goes by without her tweeting to D.C. government officials, trying to make them see the usefulness of opening their data and that there are people out there like her who really want to put said data to use.
A case in point was when in 2010 she and a group of other engaged parents drafted a proposal using open DC Public School data as well as data they collected for a new middle schools plan that the then D.C. Public School Chancellor Michelle Rhee approved and implemented (although not perfectly.) Sandra thinks that the most effective change happens at the local level, by people who truly care about what is happening in their own community. That is why having access to local government data is so important, and the more detailed and specific the better: it enables OpenGov Champions like Sandra and many others to be better advocates for their communities.
Our OpenGov Champions are remarkable ordinary people who have done extraordinary things to open up our government. Get inspired by their stories and nominate someone in your community to become an OpenGov Champion.
On April 27, all roads will lead to Philly for the fifth annual BarCamp NewsInnovation (BCNI) and its third annual News hackathon. BCNI (which is part of Philly Tech Week) is a one-day national unconference on journalism innovation and the future of news as explored by practitioners and others in the same field. Sunlight is one of the sponsors for the event.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of the Sunlight Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within the guest blog.
Pam Selle is a News Apps Developer and Community Evangelist for AxisPhilly, a nonprofit investigative news organization that prioritizes work in the public interest. She is a resident of Philadelphia, speaks at national and regional technical events, and blogs at thewebivore.com. Follow her at @pamasaur.
Philadelphia is known as a leader in the open government movement – the city lays claim to the second Chief Data Officer in the country (Sunlight OpenGov Champion Mark Headd), is a two-time Code for America host city, is home to an active Code for America Brigade and has social good hackathons at least every month, sometimes every week. There’s a strong interest in creating applications to inform and empower citizens with apps such as Lobbying.ph, PhillySNAP and Baldwin using public data for their respective purposes.
In February, the city released the AVI calculator, an online app that helps residents determine real estate taxes under a new policy that went into effect. The city also made the data powering the calculator available as an API. This allowed AxisPhilly, an independent, nonprofit news organization, use the AVI calculator API and transform it from just informational to a discussion tool.
The website appsforphilly.org, which lists open source projects in Philadelphia, lists these two projects side by side. So how did a city government and a news organization end up next to each other on this list of open source projects? What’s the story behind Philadelphia making a web app and releasing the data to enable tools like AxisPhilly’s? For one, both projects are open source and allow for code-sharing. You can access the code for both the City of Philadelphia’s AVI project and AxisPhilly’s map project template on GitHub. AxisPhilly’s project also leverages the property parcels open data set.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of the Sunlight Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within the guest blog.
Jase Wilson is Co-founder & CEO at Neighbor.ly -- a civic crowd funding platform.
On April 20, CityCamp returns to Kansas City for its second year. Based on the popular series created by Code for America alumnus Kevin Curry and inspired by the Sunlight Foundation’s own TransparencyCamp, CityCampKC is a day long unconference at the nexus of community, government and technology in Kansas City.
Last year’s event focused on open source and open data, helping to drive communication and innovation within local government in the Kansas City region. Things will be a bit different than last year, but trust us, that’s a good thing! Instead of a predefined speaker list, sessions will be programmed by attendees and will emphasize the increasing diversity in government, government technology and civic engagement. Specifically, trying to balance gender, race and age cohorts involved in the conversations that shape the city. This year, discussion topics will be chosen the morning of the event and can be suggested by anyone!
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of the Sunlight Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within the guest blog.
Seamus Kraft is the Executive Director at OpenGov Foundation -- an organization dedicated to developing and deploying technologies that support every citizen's ability to participate in their government and hold it accountable. You can reach him at @seamuskraft
The best technology is insidiously useful. It does not force better ways of doing business. It suggests them, extending the familiar and comfortable without the user realizing she has gone farther, faster, smoother. Like the perfect note in a song, you cannot imagine it not being there.
But technology is only a tool. If it helps you do your job or live your life more efficiently and effectively, buy it. If it makes life harder, slower or more costly, don’t buy it. Plain and simple. Especially in the United States Congress, where money, time and tech are scarcer than snowballs in Silicon Valley.
The purpose of Congress is to make policy on behalf of taxpayers. Public officials perform very specific and specialized tasks to fulfill that purpose. Citizens keep an eye on them and hold them accountable. Can technology help these users — inside and outside of government — collaborate to do their jobs better? Project Madison, launched by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), was our first attempt at answering in the affirmative.
On February 23, Sunlight Boston together with Open Government Boston, organized a one day event to celebrate the international Open Data Day. The event was created to bring together organizers to learn how to visualize or analyze data using different skill sets to help the global open data community grow. In DC, our very own Eric Mill together with Josh Tauberer organized a DC event to mark the International Open Data Day and you can read about their event that attract over 150 developers, data scientists, social entrepreneurs, government employees, and other open data enthusiasts here and here.
Here is a recap of what went down in Boston...
Boston-area activists celebrated Open Data Day by spending the afternoon together
at Bocoup Loft, where we shared datasets, project ideas, and pizza. Attending were a mix of government workers, activists, hobbyists, and people who’d only just heard of “open data” and were looking to get involved - about twenty people in total.
Participants at the National Data Day in Boston. Photo Credit: Open Media Boston.
Attendees worked on various projects, including improving the materials for our introductory workshop, and helping with the Open Science course sprint being coordinated by Creative Commons at the Stanford Open Data Day hackathon. An employee of the Department of Labor showed off an open database she’d worked on, and the city of Boston’s chief data scientist gave advice on how to navigate local open data. But by far the most favored activity was chatting: getting to know each other and finding out about open data efforts happening in Boston and around the globe.
In just the few days since the event, we've begun to make plans for new collaborations and future meetups. In Boston, at least, Open Data Day was a definite success.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of the Sunlight Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within the guest blog.
Jason Hibbets is the project manager at Red Hat and lead administrator for opensource.com.He has been applying open source principles in neighborhood organizations in Raleigh, NC for several years, highlighting the importance of transparency, collaboration, and community building.Follow the rest of his thoughts at @jhibbets.
My latest writing project has been quite challenging. At the beginning of 2013, I wrapped up the first draft of a book I’m writing about the open government movement in Raleigh, North Carolina. The City of Raleigh has made a lot of progress over the last two years, which is part of the inspiration for collecting Raleigh’s story. The movement towards a more open and transparent government started to accelerate after the city council unanimously passed an open government policy.
Raleigh is on the verge of defining their open data policy and a draft of their open data standards is currently posted on Open Raleigh. From my conversations with Jason Hare, the Open Data Program Manager for the City of Raleigh, the city is about to strategically release a bunch of open data. All this is in preparation for an upcoming Triangle Datapalooza, a region-wide event rumored for later this spring that aims to excite the entrepreneurial community about open data and discover new opportunities.
This is all very exciting for civic geeks and hackers in the Triangle area. I’m excited because I saw an opportunity to collect Raleigh’s open government and open data story. I’m in the final stages of finishing the book. The first round of editing is complete and my editors and I are finalizing the latest changes. I plan to self-publish the book (paperback and eBook), and I’m considering starting an IndieGoGo campaign to help crowdfund the initial round of publishing. I am also crowdsourcing ideas for the book cover on my personal blog.
The third annual International Open Data Hackathon is this Saturday, and it's an exciting opportunity to explore what's possible with datasets.
There will be hackathon events all over the world, bringing people together to find and use public data in a way that helps citizens engage with the information.
Sunlighters have participated in the past, and our own Eric Mill is one of the people helping organize this year's DC hackathon along with our friend Josh Tauberer of GovTrack.
One of those tools is baltimorevacants.org, a dynamic map that lets you search and see more than 30,000 vacant houses and vacant lots in Baltimore. To capture on video the source of that data, we drove around Baltimore filming abandoned houses, streets and even entire blocks that are just left to decay, attracting crime and rats.
Like Shea says in the video, it’s impactful to see 30,000 vacant houses or lots mapped out over the city. But it is even more powerful to see the actual places. I’m still haunted by the sight of all those vacant, rotting houses with boarded up windows and doors we saw all over Baltimore. As a visual storyteller, I could imagine how each one of these houses has a story to tell. Maybe a factory closed, people lost their jobs, packed up and moved, and after enough of their neighbors had left, the ones left behind could not bear to live on an empty street and finally they all went.
Looking at Shea’s work, I realized that data can be used tell a story too, one from real life that literally “connects the dots” and paints with broader strokes to get the full picture. That’s why Shea loves hacking on the open data the City of Baltimore started releasing in 2011: there is always a real life connection to the work he is doing and he can see it all around him.
Another one is an app called Spot Agent that uses parking citation data to warn you if a meter maid might be close by. Then there’s one that uses the city’s 311 data to show the most common problems occurring in any Baltimore neighborhood based on words that appear the most in the service requests, such as “trash,” “rat,” “illegal” or “light.”
He does a lot of this work with the help of other developers and interested citizens, connected through hackathons and other events. There is a vibrant community for this sort of work in Baltimore such that when the city started releasing its data sets through the Open Baltimore portal there already was an active bunch of people ready to go and put it to use. The city has been pleased with that, as these civic hackers can build something for fun and for free in a weekend that would take them weeks, maybe even months to complete and cost tens of thousands of dollars. Shea has been tag-teaming with the city directly, using the data it released and giving the city advice on how the data could be improved upon, mainly that it should be updated in real time instead of doing a one-time dump.
Why does Shea Frederick spend so much of his own time sorting out this data into meaningful, usable formats when he might as well be competing in a cyclocross race somewhere? Well, for one, he loves what he does. And second, he has grown to love Baltimore and wants to give back by giving others tools that can help them connect with what’s happening around the city. This is OpenGov Championship at work: taking data that’s available and putting it to use, and working together with the local government to make it even better.
Our OpenGov Champions are remarkable ordinary people who have done extraordinary things to open up our government. Get inspired by their stories and nominate someone in your community to become an OpenGov Champion.
Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within the guest blog.
